Optimism is an outlook on life such that one
maintains a view of the world as a positive place. People would say
that optimism is seeing the glass "half full" of water as opposed
to half empty. It is the philosophical opposite of pessimism. Optimists generally
believe that people and events are inherently good, so that most
situations work out in the end for the best.

A common conundrum illustrates
optimism-versus-pessimism with the question, does one regard a
given glass of water, filled to half its capacity, as
half full or as half empty? Conventional wisdom expects
optimists to reply, "Half full," and pessimists to respond, "Half
empty" (assuming that "full" is considered good, and empty,
"bad").

Another paradox sometimes associated with
optimism is that the only thing an optimist cannot view as positive
is a pessimist. Pessimism, however, as it acts as a check to
recklessness, may even then be viewed in a positive light.

The anarchist philosopher William
Godwin demonstrated perhaps even more optimism than Leibniz. He
hoped that society would eventually reach the state where calm
reason would replace all violence and force, that mind could
eventually make matter subservient to it, and that intelligence
could discover the secret of immortality. Much of this
philosophy is exemplified in the Houyhnhnms of
Jonathan
Swift's Gulliver's
Travels.

Psychology

Overoptimism, or strong optimism, is the
overarching mental state wherein people believe that things will
more likely go well for them than go badly. Compare this with the
valence
effect of prediction, a tendency for
people to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening
rather than bad things.

Optimism
bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be
over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.

Personal optimism correlates strongly with
self-esteem,
with psychological well-being and with physical and mental health.
Martin
Seligman, in researching this area, criticises academics for
focusing too much on causes for pessimism and not enough on
optimism. He states that in the last three decades of the 20th
century journals published 46,000 psychological papers on
depression and only 400 on joy.

Optimism has been shown to be correlated with
better immune systems in healthy people who have been subjected to
stress.

Ideologically convinced optimists may defend
failures in their hoped-for outcomes by discussing "misplaced
optimism" rather than abandoning optimism altogether.

A number of scholars have suggested that,
although optimism and pessimism might seem like opposites, in
psychological terms they do not function in this way. Having more
of one does not mean you have less of the other. The factors that
reduce one do not necessarily increase the other. On many occasions
in life we need both in equal supply. Antonio
Gramsci famously called for "pessimism of the intellect,
optimism of the will": the one the spur to action, the other the
resilience to believe that such action will result in meaningful
change even in the face of adversity.